CEN Lecture Series | Microfluidics for Computer Recognition of Bacteria and Their Placement in Droplets for Antimicrobial Testing (June 2023)
Dr. William G. Pitt’s lab has developed a process to collect bacteria and place them in a microfluidic device (MFD) in which individual bacteria can be encapsulated in single droplets in an oil flow, which droplets may contain various types and/or concentrations of Abx for a much faster determination of antimicrobial susceptibility. Instead of indiscriminately forming tens of thousands of droplets from all collected blood plasma, space and time are saved by only forming nanoliter-sized droplets around a single bacterium as it flows through the MFD. The researchers have combined computer vision recognition software with video capture of flow in their 3D-printed MFD. This presentation describes the results of identification of test particles, blood cells and bacteria in control suspensions and in blood plasma, and their placement in aqueous drops suspended in oil in a microfluidic device.
About the Speaker
Professor William G. Pitt joined the chemical engineering faculty at Brigham Young University in 1987 after receiving a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since then he has supervised more than $5 million in research funds, serving as principal research advisor to 45 graduate students. Dr. Pitt is noted for research in the areas of polymeric biomedical materials and drug delivery, ultrasonically triggered drug delivery, which may permit delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs to the sites of cancerous tumors without affecting the rest of the body. His recent activity is in rapid antibiotic susceptibility diagnostics in microfluidic devices. His creativity is evidenced by his h-index of 63, his 9 patents and 175 peer-reviewed journal articles, which have been cited over 11,200 times.
Dr. Pitt teaches classes in biomedical engineering, polymer science, materials science, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer and creative problem solving. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and is a member of that Institute, and also of the Society for Biological Engineering, Society for Biomaterials, Controlled Release Society, and the American Society for Microbiology. He is visiting and doing research in the lab of Dr. Ghaleb Husseini at the AUS during May and June of 2023.
For more information, contact [email protected].
